“A photograph is not taken, it’s made”-anonymous The next Sunday morning I woke up early and headed to the studio. Once I arrived, Lia showed me inside and introduced me to all the staff who quickly moved around. I was impressed to see so many people working to generate eight pictures; there was the photographer and his assistant, the designer, hairstylist, makeup crew, lighting and the model. I bet that most of you believe that the one making the magic and all the work is the photographer, but believe it or not, he only sets the camera and presses the button, but it is around eight other people who work together to create one single picture. Lia has one of the most curious and demanding jobs she designs the picture, she knows what the model will wear with what background, the lighting and designs the location where the picture will be taken. Once the photoshoot started, everyone started to move fast. I was so entertained observing the photographer move back and forth and side to side to obtain different angles. Also, I was so intrigued on how he knew exactly how to take the shot and from what angles and with what lighting, he made it look so easy which made me wonder weather it was as easy as it seemed. The journey went by really fast but slowly by this I mean it took a day to get 8 good pictures of the dressed but it was all so fast that seemed like we had 1000 pictures. By the end of the day I was so grateful I was able to get this experience. Not only did I learned so much on how a photo shot works but also how a picture is not only taken but also made.
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Vivid. Vivid is a word I can use to describe what I saw today at Barranco and Miraflores during our photography field trip. We left school early with one goal in mind, get the best pictures we can to portray our theme, which was to portray the friendliness of the people from the area. Why take pictures? For our current unit, “The Deep Dive” we are researching on a specific issue in Lima, which we would later on photograph and exhibit our images in an exhibition at FDR. The topic I am focused right now with my partner is street children, but to be able to capture the best images of street children we first have to learn and get an experience of how to take good pictures. This is what we did today. I was very interested and excited about the idea of the field trip since I have always had a passion for photography but have never had the chance to actually go somewhere with the sole purpose of taking good photos. Once we got to Miraflores our first stop was at the Santa Cruz market. Aitana was my partner today, and we decided to walk through the market. We had no specific purpose in mind at that moment, we just knew we wanted to take pictures of people, especially children, but didn’t know in which specific setting we wanted them to be. So after taking a closer look at different people carrying out their daily chores, we felt immersed in the activity of the market and started to get ideas of what we wanted to capture. We wanted to take pictures of people selling their products, but we weren’t sure how to approach to them and take the picture. I figured out it would be fine to step up and speak to the lady in her stand, tell her about our endeavor and if she minded if we took a picture of her with her products. The lady, like many others, was very enthusiastic about the idea and rapidly agreed on us taking a picture of her. That’s when we realised how friendly and outgoing the people were and we decided to capture in our images of the joy they have for what they do. While we walked through the market’s alleys searching for moments and people to capture, we noticed how passionate and engaged people from the market were in their job. We took a photo of a man who sells fish in his stand holding the biggest fish he had caught, looking not only proud but happy. This picture and that moment opened our eyes to see that even though these people don’t have everything in the world or everything they wished they had they are still 100% positive in life and happy with what they do and have. The experience at the market was unique and deep, we were able to see a reality at we are not used to seeing every day and learning how this people live and feel really was able to change our whole perspective about this kind of people being always sad and disappointed with how their lives had turned out. Our field trip continued and we moved to the district of Barranco where we were able to see many houses built with the classic 1940’s architecture but also the people of the district. Walking through the center of Barranco was very interesting since we encountered a much more relaxed and cultural life. We wanted to photograph people and be able to show their life through that picture. It was interesting to see how people weren’t as friendly and enthusiastic, but were still open to talk to us and letting and us take pictures of them. In Barranco we were able to photograph a lot of occasions of parents or grandparents with their children which was very pleasing to see the love and satisfaction these people had towards the children and we could see in their eyes how happy they were with what they had accomplished. Once the trip was over, we went back to school and ended up choosing the best six pictures we had of the market of Miraflores (because we liked those better) to write our photo story.
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